Cancer: Written in the Stars?

Among other things the summer equinox means

(besides the sunlight fracturing my sleep at 5:30 in the freaking morning), star-gazers know that the sun’s most northerly position on the day of the equinox is in Taurus – though it wasn’t always so. In ancient Greece, the sun would’ve ridden to its equinox peak in a different constellation: specifically, Cancer. When I stumbled on that tidbit in the paper yesterday, I was reminded how long that name’s been with us.

Cancer’s new prominence in the modern age – in incidence, and in awareness – often fools us into thinking it’s a new illness; but in fact, the disease is as old as our species. It was first named in the fifth century B.C.E. by Greek physicians in the Hippocratic tradition who, frustrated in their attempts to pry tumors free of their patients, called them karkinos (“the crab”) because of the tumors’ claw-like grip.

Greek knowledge formed the basis of much of Roman learning. As Hellenic power waned and Roman influence dominated the world, the Greek word for the disease was eventually replaced by the Latin synonym for crab: cancer.

There may even be another reason these tumors reminded Greek physicians of a crab, though I’ve no proof of this. In mythology, the goddess Hera tried to foil Hercules at every turn – and during his battle with the Hydra (when he needed all his wits and strength) she sent a large crab to bite at his feet during the battle, hoping it would affect his footing enough to cause his defeat. When Hercules instead crushed the crab, myth says Hera memorialized it in the heavens as one of the signs of the Zodiac.

In Hippocrates’ time lifespans were much shorter so cancer would’ve been rare, and would’ve affected the young and otherwise healthy. It would’ve seemed a random calamity of cosmically cruel proportions, biting at the heels of otherwise vibrant youth – like the one Hera sent to torment Hercules – and just like pediatric cancer still seems to us today.